


Jolene

by Chokopoppo



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, F/F, Mutual Pining, Obsession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 11:05:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11160594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chokopoppo/pseuds/Chokopoppo
Summary: “Get fucked,” Isabel hisses. If the insult penetrates Diana’s skull, there’s no obvious signal on her face. “You wanted to ogle, didn’t you? Didn’t get a good enough look the first time?” After so long, after all the searching, she can’t even look at her. It’s like staring into the sun. Diana’s beauty blisters the skin of her face, whites her eyes out.“Please, Isabel,” Diana says, “the war is almost over. The world is ready to stop fighting. Aren’t you?” She reaches out, as if to touch Isabel’s cheek. “Aren’t you tired?”





	Jolene

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Джолин](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12102276) by [never_v_hudo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/never_v_hudo/pseuds/never_v_hudo)



> Hey guys. Fandom in general? It needs more lesbians! It needs more of that Good Lesbian Shit, and I'm here to deliver. With passion, and Dolly Parton!
> 
> If you enjoy, please leave a kudos or a comment and make my heart sing a whole bunch of songs. Or leave me an ask on my [tumblr!](chokopoppo.tumblr.com/ask) Whatever you like.

_Your beauty is beyond compare_  
_With flaming locks of auburn hair_  
_With ivory skin and eyes of emerald green -_

_Your smile is like a breath of spring_  
_Your voice is soft like summer rain_  
_And I cannot compete with you, Jolene…_

— Dolly Parton, _Jolene_

She knows who Diana is. Of course she does. Isabel’s not a complete moron - as soon as she stumbled into the darkness after that first violent coup, barefaced and humiliated but viciously, violently alive, she sought out any scrap of information she could get on the woman who spared her life. She doesn’t have any room in her mind for forgiveness, and anyway, she hardened her heart a long time ago to such petty, mortal things as gratitude. No, this is something different - it’s a hunger. An obsession, if you’d like, but a bitter and voracious one.

Isabel drinks hot black Italian coffee and pours over a photograph she cut from a newspaper. The French call her La Femme Mystérieuse - her own foolish German people call her Der Nächste Jungfrau Maria. The Americans just call her Wonder Woman. She doesn’t bother with such grandiose monikers - when she sees a paper seller peddling her picture, she just calls her The Bitch, and buys every copy she can get her hands on.

She doesn’t remember when she first heard the name Diana, but she remembers the first time she saw her, dancing with _Isabel’s_ man in a dress so blue it looked like she’d been cut out of the sky. That made sense - after all, the Diana of Greek myth had been the goddess of the moon and the sky - or perhaps that had been Roman? Isabel couldn’t give two shits about the classics. Poetry, literature - such things are not to be respected. Science is the blood that pulses between civilizations in the anatomy of humanity, not legends or religions or false gods.

Except that these gods are real.

When she closes her eyes, Isabel can see those handsome features, those dark eyes, that long black hair falling in ocean waves over a golden crown. True humility had never known her until that moment - never before in her life had she been so low as the rage in those eyes had cast her down.

Instead of screaming, she slams her palms on the photograph again and again, grinding her teeth in frustration until she feels her jaw crumble into dust and hot sweat pours into her eyes like tears. Why the image isn’t any better, she can’t understand. Why she can’t get what she wants, why she can’t _understand_ what she wants, she can’t understand. She can’t understand, she can’t understand, she can’t understand.

She doesn’t want to kill Diana. She doesn’t know what she wants. But she’s never wanted anything so much in her life.

~~

The first time she meets Diana, Isabel is bedridden in a hospital with a broken collarbone. Fucking of _course_ she is.

She’s rousing herself from a painkiller-induced catnap in a tent on the outskirts of Dunkirk when the towering amazon invites herself in through the flap. Isabel feels like her lungs are filling with black sludge, gasps in what air she can before she drowns in her own terror and fury.

“What are you doing here?” She manages, trying to sit up but wriggling uselessly against her bedsheets like a beached trout instead. “How did you find me?”

“Please relax. I’m not here to put you on trial, Dr. Maru,” Diana says, and her voice is so strange and mellifluous that Isabel wants to grab her by the throat, choke it out of her, and shove it in a mason jar to keep on a shelf in her lab. She settles for a scowl. “I heard you were injured, and I was in the area. I wanted to see if it was really you. I thought perhaps you had perished, since so little of your exploits has been published since the events of the gala.”

“Get fucked,” Isabel hisses. If the insult penetrates Diana’s skull, there’s no obvious signal on her face. “You wanted to ogle, didn’t you? Didn’t get a good enough look the first time? Well, I’ve seen enough of you. Last restaurant I went to, your goddamn picture was on the inside of the ladies’ stall. Can’t even get away from you when I shit.” She stares resolutely up at the canvas above her. After so long, after all the searching, she can’t even look at her. It’s like staring into the sun. Diana’s beauty blisters the skin of her face, whites her eyes out.

“Please, Isabel,” Diana says, “the war is almost over. The world is ready to stop fighting. Aren’t you?” She reaches out, as if to touch Isabel’s cheek. “Aren’t you tired?”

“Don’t touch me,” she croaks, voice shaking with the fear that if those fingers touch her, her flesh will burn away like rot under pure silver. “Get out. I don’t need you - I don’t need your pity.”

Diana withdraws her hand as requested - but she watches Isabel for just one moment too long. “I spared you for a reason, Isabel,” she says, “you could be different, you know. Things could be different for you.”

And then she is gone, as quickly as she came.

When Isabel dreams, she dreams of stars reflecting off of flat ocean water, sparkling in a staccato flash until each light and its mirror image is snuffed out, one by one, leaving her alone, sinking deep into dark water.

~~

The second time she meets Diana, the first war has ended, and she’s unlucky enough to be caught doing something thoroughly unthreatening. Ice cream dribbles down her bony fingers.

Isabel used to be afraid to eat food in public. She still is, sort of, but she’s trying out new masks these days. There’s a doctor in Britain who makes a living taping skin over gas scars on wounded war veterans. She doesn’t feel comfortable asking him for help - despite singlehandedly creating his entire economy, she thinks she might very well be unwelcome on his doorstep. He might recognize her - luckily, the average person doesn’t. They see the scar and flinch away in disgust.

She really, really wishes Diana would get the message on that front.

“Isabel,” Diana says, and hurries over towards her, grinning broadly. Her body is just as young as it has always been, but she looks older now, somehow - invisible lines around her eyes marking soft signals of her perpetual exhaustion. The post-war efforts must be hard on the public face of the Allied Victory. “The one place I never expected to see you. Are you enjoying your ice cream?”

“I was,” she grumbles half-heartedly, “don’t you have something better to do?”

“There’s nothing better than watching a reconciliation,” Diana replies, “how is yours going? Are you coming to terms with - “

“I’m not sorry for what I did,” Isabel interrupts, “not everyone is like you, _Wonder Woman_. Having an ice cream doesn’t make me innocent, and your concern doesn’t make me sorry for anything except maybe your naiveté.” Diana’s face falls in disappointment, but Isabel plunges on, dives headfirst into that icy water. “I was pursuing scientific advancements. And I’m not sorry for the people who suffered and died in the wake of academia. I did what I wanted and I don’t care who got in the way.”

“But surely, you are struggling - Ares violated your free will - “

“There is nothing left to violate in scorched earth,” she snaps, “I was already ruined when he found me, and ruined by my own hands.”

Diana is silent for a moment. “You are not marred forever, Isabel,” she says, “but if you fall into your old sickness, I will stop you by any means necessary.”

For the first time in a long time, Isabel feels that sickly sweet strike of lightning up and down her spine. The back of her neck is red hot. “Is that a promise?” She asks, and doesn’t bother keeping the glimmer out of her eyes.

~~

Sometimes she lies on her back in whatever bed she’s rented out for the evening, breathing slowly, and tries to remember everything about her. The faint smell of the sea that accompanies her wherever she goes, the bronze glint of sweat on her shoulders, her strange and irreplicable voice, dripping down her like summer rain.

Sometimes she imagines killing her, choking the breath out of her in fair combat - far more often, though, she thinks of Diana beating her senseless, breaking through concrete with her unresisting body. She could. Isabel couldn’t fight her away - caught off-guard, she would be entirely at the goddess’s mercy. 

(Sometimes, in the dark, she imagines those strong hands taking her knees in each hand and parting them with no objection at all, and she feels ashamed - though not enough to stop.)

Sometimes, it feels good to give in to thoughts of such futility when her brain can’t push her through her newest problem and failure darkens her door again. Her own mind punishing herself for her mistakes in the form of Diana, a heaven-sent messenger of ultimate victory over Isabel’s crumpled, withering form. After all, she deserves every atrocity she’s ever suffered. She’s committed so many more herself.

Sometimes the frustration is too much to bear, and she walks through dark streets in the evening, looks down over the side of the bridge and wonders if she should jump - not because the world would be better without her (surely it would, but she’s never given a damn about the world before and she doesn’t intend to start now), but because she’s not strong enough to fight through the demons rattling around in her brain, wearing Diana’s face like an ugly caricature of Isabel’s prejudices. Crushing these frustrations grows harder and harder as the days go by, but they’re drowned easily in Italian coffee and left behind every time she gets on a train.

Sometimes, she wonders how Diana intends to watch her. If she’s watching now. If she can see into Isabel’s mind, if she’s been hiding in her head ever since they first locked eyes on the asphalt of that landing strip, so far away and yet so close.

Sometimes.

_He talks about you in his sleep,_  
_There’s nothing I can do to keep_  
_From crying when he calls your name, Jolene -_

_And I can easily understand_  
_How you could easily take my man,_  
_But you don’t know what he means to me, Jolene…_

— Dolly Parton, _Jolene_

On slow nights, when whatever lab she’s holed up in is moving like molasses dripping through water, Isabel humors herself enough to wonder where she’d be if she’d never met General Ludendorff. Sure, she’d still be a scientist somewhere, probably Germany, would’ve still had her lab in which she built her empire of toxins. She worked hard to get where she was before the end of the war ripped it from her hands and burned it in front of her. After all, she’s building it again.

But there had been something so intoxicating about being _valued_ the way Ludendorff had valued her, the way no one else ever had. He would listen to her when she spoke, and though he was too stupid to understand the technicalities of her language, he always looked as though her ideas gave him an immense high, like he was getting drunk on the power she chose to share with him. His cruelty had buzzed in her blood, too, making her vapid and giggly whenever he permitted her to witness it. It had been sublime.

She doesn’t miss him. There was nothing particularly special about _him,_ from his appearance to his mind to his desire. But she misses what he gave her. How _important_ he made her feel.

Diana took that away from her. Diana took _everything_ away from her. Isabel ought to hate her.

But she doesn’t.

~~

The third, fourth, and fifth times Isabel sees Diana after the war, they’re both in the hospital. Diana always greets her, says something soft and pleasant about the day, Isabel remains civil, and they eventually go on their way.

Isabel likes the hospital - it’s good work that pays well in her field of choice, and it lets her run under the radar, stifled from detection. Her name was never all that well-known in France, so she’s settled in Lille, quietly waiting to see if anyone intends to chase her out of town. So far, so good.

Not to mention that the hospital is fairly large, overworked and understaffed, and nobody notices if bodies go missing between the operating table and the morgue, or when certain patients can’t overcome their injuries despite their best efforts to the contrary. She doesn’t kill _many_ patients - just enough to remind herself who she is, in case she considered redemption in her grasp.

Other hospitals are doing fascinating things with blood transfusions, and Isabel follows the study with interest. Her profession and skill set have never been based around healing people, but that doesn’t always seem to be what happens with blood, either. She read recently that human beings have three or four different types of blood, and that said blood types can only accept certain other blood types. She read Landsteiner’s study in her college days, but never gave it much thought. It’s fascinating.

Plus, she has access to the medical freezer where blood is stored, and has been given express permission to take any kind she likes for the research portion of the facility. She’s really starting to get a good feeling about this.

Diana visits patients on social occasions, showing up at the hospital to spend time with children in the pediatric ward or the mortally ill, dead-for-sure victims. Isabel watches her from afar more often than she’d like to admit, humoring herself with the thought that Diana only visits this hospital so frequently because she knows Isabel works here. She considers testing her hypothesis - she could leave her job, move to a new hospital, see if Diana started to show up there - but it seems ridiculous and vain to do so, and she casts the thought out of her mind. Besides, if she’s wrong, she’ll be out of a job for nothing. And if Diana didn’t follow, she might not see her again.

~~

“Are you alright, Dr. Maru?” Diana asks.

Isabel stares out at the pond across the way. She doesn’t know what to say - doesn’t know how to talk to a goddess who’s feeding ducks out of a bread bag. She reminds herself that Diana could crush her skull between her thighs like a hammer smashing a watermelon, splattering this bench and the surrounding countryside with bone fragments and grey matter. It’s almost comforting - to know she is so severely disadvantaged here, completely at the mercy of the woman sitting next to her. 

“Please call me Isabel,” she says after a moment, because she doesn’t know what else she _could_ say, “you’ve done it before. Haven’t we known each other long enough?”

“I want to be your friend, Isabel,” Diana says in earnest. When Isabel closes her eyes, she feels that voice like a cool breeze against her fevered skin. “I’ve thought about what you said before, that you’re not sorry for what you did. I came to terms with it - I’ve come to terms with you. I want you to stop running from me.”

“Why do you care?” Isabel’s words are bitter, but her tone is resigned - she can feel Diana’s eyes watching her, peeling her apart, layers of skin and shame and facade tearing away under her gaze. “I was your enemy for a few days, and then I was nobody. Why do I matter to you?”

It’s quiet between them. She has nothing left to say, but Isabel wants to drag words out of Diana, wants to breathe in that voice, devour her words and take and take and _take_ everything she can strip from her. The closer she gets, the hungrier she is for her, the more she wants, shaking and insatiable.

“Because…” Diana starts, then stops, watches the light glinting off the pond. Isabel doesn’t dare look at her as she forms her thoughts like God forging life out of clay. “Because when I close my eyes, I see you staring back at me,” she says at last, “because you won’t stop haunting me. Because I should hate you, and I don’t love you, but I need you near me. It’s like I…” Her voice falls away as she struggles.

“Like you’re hungry,” Isabel tells her, and feels her entire body shudder under the weight of the words. Her bones are electricity - her blood is poison - she can barely breathe for the effort of forcing her lungs open.

Diana looks at her, and stretches her hand out, as if to touch Isabel’s cheek. “That’s it,” she says, “that’s exactly it.”

This time, Isabel leans into her hand. It doesn’t burn, like she thought it would all that time ago - it’s cool, and rough, and gentle, and when she closes her eyes, she feels the waves of that star-darkened ocean. The world is quiet.

~~

She lies in bed in the dark of night, feels Diana’s body breathing slowly next to hers. When the amazon leaves her, the roar of fire will fill her brain like it always does, drowning out any sympathy or humanity that might get in the way of her work. But right now, tangling her fingers in long, dark hair, she smells that long-forgotten seashore Diana calls home. She breathes her in, taking handfuls of hair to grip so her shaking doesn’t wake the woman at her side.

“I still want more,” she rasps quietly, “I’m still hungry, Diana. Don’t leave me yet.”

One day, Diana will leave her deep in the earth - one day, Diana will outlive her. That thought doesn’t hurt as much as Isabel thought it might. One day, Diana will take someone else, some other woman to be hungry for - but not before Isabel has taken as much as she can from her. Not before Isabel has left Diana with an imprint of her in her brain.

“A little part of you will always be mine,” she whispers, and slips away into a dream of warm hands stroking fingers through her hair.

_You could have your choice of men_  
_But I could never love again_  
_You’re the only one for me, Jolene -_

_I had to have this talk with you_  
_My happiness depends on you_  
_And whatever you decide to do, Jolene._

— Dolly Parton, _Jolene_


End file.
